How Would you Visualize 24 Hours of Tweets? [Motion Infographic]

Rather than presenting them in a list, chronologically, or as a mindmap, creative researchers in London have shown what 24 hours of tweets looks like in a motion infographic. They focused on geographically mapping tweets and retweets around London, and condense a 24 hour time period into a three minute video. Watching this video gave me the uncanny feeling that Twitter was something alive and organic. What do you think? Researchers from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London are usually focused on transportation modeling and urban sustainability, but they turned their extensive mapping expertise to Twitter this week.

The video displays a black and grey map of London with a small clock in the top right corner. As time goes by, you’ll notice original tweets appearing as red dots around the map, and retweets as yellow lines dashing from the point of origin to the location of the retweeter.

The speed at which information moves these days is something we all talk about, but really seeing it in a way that makes sense in a snapshot is rare. This slick motion infographic shows us just how active people really are on Twitter, how much they interact, and where tweets are most common. Check it out below.